At first, I will show you a female Red-winged Starling (Onychognathus morio).
So, what can I say? By now, all of you know about my passion for nature, and its wild residents. Nature is the perfect place to unwind and only to allow one's thoughts to drift into the wonderland. So often some wildlife, like these birds for instance, will appear and one can only wonder at the perfectness of their designs. Instead of shooting at them and killing them, I rather prefer to take shots of them with my camera. Simply because I see it as a free gift to all of us.
Sitting on an Acacia tree, and staring straight at me.
And here below, is the new one that I thought that I would never get.
Now what was that black bird drinking water behind the Cape Sparrow at the front?
After drinking, the bird came to sit on a fence right in front of me, to see what I was doing.
It is a Pied Starling (Lamprotornis bicolor).
Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about this lovely bird, and I included the Wikipedia article about the bird, as it's a first for me to get it.
The pied starling or African pied starling (Lamprotornis bicolor) is a bird endemic to South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini. It is common in most of its range, but largely absent from the arid northwest and the eastern lowlands of South Africa. It is found in open habitats such as grassland, karoo scrub, thornbush and agricultural land, and often associates with farm animals.
Like other starlings, the pied starling is an omnivore, taking a wide range of invertebrates, seeds and berries, but its diet is mainly insects, including many ants and termites. It will take figs from gardens and some human food discards. Foraging is frequently near livestock, with birds feeding on insects disturbed by the animals and also perching on cattle or sheep to remove ectoparasites.
And then it popped over to sit next to an Aloe tree.
My eyes will not miss a thing in the sky, and I saw this Jackal Buzzard circling high up above.
Its specie name is Jackal Buzzard (Buteo rufofuscus), and I have posted a few of them before.
So glad to see that magnificent bird of prey flying in a circle before it disappeared.
I often wonder what we would do without nature, as nothing can survive. People talk about going to live on other planets, and maybe they will one day, but then they would all have to take pills created in a laboratory for food. Thank goodness it might take a very long time to turn into reality, and by then I will be long gone to go and stay in my happy heavenly home.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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